What Exactly Is a Metabolism?

March 10, 2009 by Steve

Metabolism is basically the amount of energy your body burns to maintain itself. It is a chemical process that takes place in your body and occurs in every organism. It relates to various processes within the body that converts food and other substances into energy and other metabolic byproducts used by the body.

Everyone needs the energy that metabolism provides in order to live. Every living creature needs energy to survive. We get this energy from a chemical process during the digestion of food.

In simple terms, metabolism is the change that takes place in order for the body to use the food that we eat. It helps us maintain a healthy functioning body. It changes the food into particles that can be used by the body so it doesn’t waste what we eat.

When your body is healthy, metabolism changes food into useful resources that can heal an injury or help the body to rid itself of damaging toxins.

How Can You Achieve a Healthy Metabolism?

Every body needs nutrition, hydration and physical activity to maintain a healthy metabolism.

This means that we must follow a healthy, balanced diet. We must consume an adequate amount of water every day. And we need to incorporate physical fitness into our lives.

What it comes down to is that if we don’t get enough nutrition, hydration or physical activity, our metabolism will not be healthy and our bodies in turn will pay the price.

There are two forms of metabolism that our bodies use… anabolic and catabolic. Anabolic metabolism uses enzymes to structure larger molecules from smaller molecules. Catabolic metabolism breaks down chemicals and nutrients in the foods and drugs that we consume so that they are smaller particles that the body can then use.

Metabolism and weight loss have often been mentioned in the same sentence. This is because the ability to burn more calories than are consumed depends on the amount of food eaten and how active the metabolism is at breaking down and burning off those calories.

A healthy metabolism can burn off calories at a better rate when nutrition, hydration and physical activity are at their best levels.

By eating a good breakfast and then having 5 small healthy meals scheduled at regular intervals throughout the day, your metabolism will speed up multiple times each day to digest your food. Eating nutritious foods with balanced protein/fat/carbohydrate ratios will enhance the effect even more.

Drink 8 glasses of water a day and add some physical activity to the mix. This will speed your metabolism and burn calories in ways that will surely have your heart pumping and body dropping those unwanted pounds in no time!

Filed under: Metabolism
Tagged: digestion of food, Metabolism